INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my website, Native Light Photography, which is vast in content and in scope! My work is available here and in my book Native Light Photography: From Life To Earth From Spirit To AI, and through my gallery in Rome, It’s also available to viewers who attend the museums and international contemporary art fairs and galleries where my work is touring. I will be exhibiting next in Art Genoa in February, 2025! I normally post very little about myself or my work as I like to let the work speak for itself. Though with the surge in popularity of my work in the past decade, and with the large following I’ve established, where I’ve always posted my work in progress as is, as a visual workshop space where I can add and edit images accordingly depending where I’m at with each project’s work.

It’s been a long journey from when I took my first photography class at 18 up until now where I’m celebrating 40 years as a photographer this year! I have 45,000 followers across all social media platforms. I’m followed by an international and multigenerational audience and my website often gets 200 visitors a week from all around the world which is an honor and a thrill for any artist especially because I started my website as a place to work on each project as they were organically and naturally evolving and I had no idea anyone was even looking at it! When I realized they were I used my site as a free virtual exhibition space so that everyone around the world could have access to visual art, especially in countries where there's limited access to art and photography (for various reasons) so this was my gift for anyone interested in photography. I’m now followed by several renowned art collections including The Domain’s, Lafite Rothschild, Renault who I sold my first photograph to the President of Renault for his seminal art collection from my MFA degree show at Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, Halcyon Gallery and many more diverse followers. I had no idea at the time just how important the Renault art collection was! I recently exhibited at the Caravaggio Museum of Art in Sicily, where they acquired one of my pieces for their permanent contemporary art collection. I’m also in the collection of The New Mexico Museum of Art, The Harwood Museum of Art, The International Women’s Foundation, The National Museum of Women Artist’s, sponsored by the Smithsonian’s Women in the Arts among many more private and corporate collections. Please read my bio for more details.

This next section was written by myself and multiple art critic’s, curator’s and arts writer’s so it transitions from the first and third person frequently.

My work is in part a survey of the American Southwest, as I traveled through it and photographed the copper mining communities, silver and yellowcake mining communities throughout Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas. This project (Inside The Copper Corridor) was supported in part by the Tucson Council on the Arts and takes the viewer on a visual journey of the Southwest and document’s some of the most beautiful desert landscapes, compelling yet complex documentary work of the Southwest’s inhabitants and serves as creative documentary, fine art photography, and conceptual photography. Part travelogue, part journey into a unique region of America also deeply impacted by global warming /climate change, severe heat, drought and wildfires. In fact I am editing this On January 8th of 2025 during the Los Angeles Wildfires, one of the most heartbreaking events in modern history and personal to me as I lived in Los Angeles and in Malibu for nearly a decade.

My Work: By art Critic Carmela Brunetti (In Interview)

“Camille lived for most of her adult life in the Southwest, she lived for a decade in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico “where she insists that just opening the door to her beautiful property was like stepping inside of a stunning outdoor, living virtual studio as evidenced by her breathtaking images “The Secret Desert" “where Camille actually made the images in response to the epic regional ongoing drought and the climate crises” . In fact she had to leave the region due to getting heat stroke and landing in the hospital which precipitated the temporary and sudden move to Hawaii.” The important work Camille made during this period in her life, “The Secret Desert” is some of her most important work and is frequently exhibited internationally. She made this work to emphasize the secret ecosystem of the complex waterways beneath the earth highlighting the key to understanding this fragile, complex, yet due to the severity of global warming, a looming threat to the fragile life systems who call the underbelly of the earth home. This work according to Camille was a “call for immediate action”.

Previously published volumes of my work were published by Art On World in February of 2022-24 and multiple additional publications, this text was taken from several of them. “Camille’s stunning desert scapes with seemingly large adjacent reflecting pools of water", (the water is actually magically added, so all of the the dramatic desert and sky scapes are in actuality bare),” By adding the reflections of water one is reminded of life beneath the earth’s core, the secret life of the desert ecosystem, and the dramatic yet static beauty of the rugged landscapes that without the mirroring effects of the earth reflecting it’s projected imagined beauty back to the viewer invokes nature’s way of Narcissus from Greek mythology, which is why the work is so powerful . Beneath the desert floor, the earth is full of abundant and dynamic life system's comprised of multiple underwater ways and under earth species that if everyone was aware of these abundant life systems, which are rich and complex and nourish plant life in the desert and more, there would be a broader understanding of how life systems sustain themselves, even if they are buried deep beneath the earth’s surface. There's over a thousand diverse species cohabitating under ground from otters to reptiles underneath the desert floor, emphasizing an environmental call to action to help sustain these lives and to recognize the pivotal role in which climate change and the warming of the planet is jeopardizing the essential livelihoods of these important members of our ecosystem. Camille’s work always incorporates subtext in addition to aesthetic representation. She examines through her work the elements required to sustain life highlighting the environmental and socioeconomic challenges endemic to this region of the America’s. Through Camille’s work, she illuminates the connection that all life beneath the earth’s surface, sustain life above it. Global warming and rising temperatures are dramatically impacting people and place. As we know, climate related events like these are unfortunately multiplying not decreasing.”

My Work in New Media: Much of this content is copied from previous publications from the original authors, Carmela Brunetti, editor and publisher of Art On World from three published books of my work. Additional descriptions of the work are taken from excerpts from Art Writer’s Ann Williams, Serafina Calder and from various media journalists from the Taos News, THE Magazine, The Albuquerque Journal , New Mexico, The New Mexican, Santa Fe, New Mexico, The Union, Nevada City, California, Desert Exposure, Silver City, New Mexico, The Horse Fly, Taos, New Mexico and many others!

“Camille’s cell phone began to take on a life of it’s own particularly in relationships to her themes of the vast expansion of feminine representation, globalization and social media in the production of her technical use of it’s applications.” All the work on this website created between 2007-2025 on various cellphones from burner’s to iPhones are the results of researched visual articulations by Camille over the years. “Just when I thought no one was paying attention, I was living on the Big Island of Hawaii at the time and I got an invitation to exhibit in Chelsea in NYC, so I grabbed the opportunity and moved to New York where I had always wanted to live and stayed”. "The work took off from there but not exclusively in New York, instead in Italy which is beautifully poetic because I was previously known in America for my early film based camera work “Gaze Studies”, where I reconstructed Italian Renaissance paintings while projecting and double exposing the negative on the body, mainly my own so that the viewer could not distinguish between the painting and the body inserted. I made a beautiful series, that oddly enough has not been digitized yet so my Italian audience’s have yet to see this work though they will very soon since my second book will be out in late 2026. The work earned me the New Mexico Council on Photography Award in 2001, which was fitting because at the time I was the first Department Chair of the University of New Mexico Taos campus for their First Certified Photography Department! This culminated into a solo exhibition at The New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe with famed photography curator Steven Yates, author of myriad critically acclaimed photography books and who is to my sheer delight, one of the contributing authors writing the introduction to my upcoming book being published in by Afterhours Books, the absolute best publishing house of photography and art books in the business! I have so much respect for all of the contributing authors to my book “Identity”, by Camille Ross.

“Critics and the public are judges who give their opinions on the provocative works that artists present in the international art scene, and in this case as editor I can only state the following, “Camille Ross is a great photographer who with her third eye penetrates reality and presents it to the public by manipulating it with new media . Her games of nuance, of distortion of the image are the PUNCTUM’S of her new photography. Her photographic research is a new way of contextualizing the female figure in the era of globalization. “The projects the Selfie that we will present in the second volume are, as she explains the elaboration of the projected and objectified self”. As if to emphasize that in her works we perceive the alteration of the “self”, this makes us reflect on the emergence of new technological monsters. In the iconographies we encounter in the pages of the book we notice how little considered across all ethnic groups, women are and the chase for eternal youth, exaggerated beauty, lead to the death of the self. Thus a lack of self-regard is accentuated. A catalytic and provocative element naturally prevails in these works, which is respect for the human being. Her works refer us to sociology, to the history of man and his existence”. Carmela Brunetti of Art On World wrote about my work. Published by Art On World, February 27, 2022

For the Serious Collector of Fine Art Photographic Prints, You Can Find Me On Saatchi and Many More Sites, Where There Are Many Other Fantastic Photographers. All Images of Children Are Not For Sale And May Not Be Used For Any Purpose. Please Feel Free to Call Me for Details at 732-640-6313 Or Email: Camille@nativelightphotography.com